Thoughts on Cultural Competency

Hello, Everyone! I know it’s been a while since I last wrote in this blog. Sorry, sorry, sorry! It’s been a crazy couple of months wrapping up the African American Achievement Gap Study. We now have a Final Report that you can access from our website. As a matter of fact, I asked the other commissions if they would allow us to post all of the final reports on our website so people who were interested could go to one place to gather information.

Today I want to write to you about the process post-Final Report. As some of you know, I have been doing presentations on eliminating the achievement gap since I came on board at CISL. I have done presentations at conferences, in staff meetings and in individual classrooms. I plan to continue with these presentations, so please invite me or Sally Brownfield (our other facilitator) to visit you. We can share data as well as strategies that may be helpful as you consider the diverse populations you serve every day. I would also be more than happy to present this information to parent groups. Parents are often left out of the data loop and don’t realize how critical this information is for the success of their own children.

Just this week, in honor of Dr. King, the five different achievement gap study groups were invited to make two separate presentations to the Senate Education Committee and the House Education Committee. As a newbie to the Hill, I was a little nervous. What would I have to say to these important people? Then I remembered, when it comes to educating our students of color, I am really the expert. I went into our first presentation with confidence, excited to share our findings with this committee. Unfortunately, the experience served to remind all of us why we are even involved in this work…

At the end of our presentation, one of the members of the committee asked the powerful question – What is “cultural competence”? There may be many of you out there who have heard this term thrown around on occasion and who may also have the same question. The question itself was not a problem. My colleague shared the theoretical definition – cultural competence is the ability to communicate and interact effectively with members of different cultures (particularly those to which you do not belong). Again, the problem was not the question. The problem came with the attachment I made to the definition. I decided we talk too often about the theoretical. I wanted each member of the committee to understand a practical application of cultural competence, and so I added a description of a situation in which cultural competency is required. For example, when disciplining an African American child, one should not take a step into that boy’s personal space and proceed to raise one’s voice. This will be perceived as a challenge to the young man who will likely respond in a negative way and further disengage from the work that is happening in the classroom.

Before I could completely finish my thought, this member interrupted me to submit that this was not what she was thinking. She was convinced that cultural competence should relate more to understanding the cultural challenges that occur when a student moves from another country where people have no toilets… I was dumbfounded and chose to mention that I was raised as an African American in a white home (I was adopted), whereas my husband and most of my students were raised in an urban, predominantly African American community. I saw very distinct cultural differences between us and had to learn to adapt in order to communicate effectively. Before I could finish, this person interrupted me and began to suggest that these differences were not in fact things that teachers should learn about. She said teachers already had too much to worry about and should not have to also worry about these minor distinctions. She even suggested that students who were born and raised here really weren’t so different that trainings on these cultural differences would even be necessary.

I mention this interaction to you because of the response of all the other members of the study groups. As I sat through the rest of the presentation (our heated interaction was eventually cut off by the committee chair), I was shaking inside. I was worried that I had said the wrong thing, although I had not raised my voice and had remained very respectful. I was worried that I had sounded stupid, although I really believed everything I had spoken out loud. Every word I had spoken was based on 15 years of experience in the classroom. As I turned around to return to my seat after the presentation, most of the members of the other groups shook my hand. Some even said “thank-you.” In the face of my insecurity, the other presenters were so excited that I had made a stand for the heart of the reason we were even involved in these studies and making these presentations. Many of them stopped me after all the presentations were over to say they really appreciated my willingness to speak out in the face of such important figures.

If the answer to the achievement gap issue was merely in helping people learn to be better math teachers or better English teachers… However, the issue is not in teachers’ abilities to do a better job of teaching content. The bigger concern is that too many teachers do not know how to communicate with the children and families with whom they interact each day. I would even suggest that most teachers have a desire to do a better job in this area. They are just not sure where to go to learn how to do a better job.

After hours of thinking about this unfortunate incident, I have come to the conclusion that this very conversation may be the most important one we can have as we go forward in making efforts to eliminate the achievement gap. This weekend many of us will gather from every ethnic group. I plan to ask each group to give me the 5 – 10 most critical elements of culture that they would like me to communicate with teachers as I go into schools to help educators through this process. If there is anything you would like to share from your culture and experience, please feel free to do so via our e-mail (cisl@k12.wa.us). I would love to add your voices to ours.

When all is said and done, what happened that one day with that one individual is not the big deal. The big deal is that there are still far too many educators who believe as this person does and who need to understand the damage we are doing to our students when we don’t communicate effectively with each one. Is this a difficult charge? Yes! As a former teacher who spent most of my career in very diverse communities nothing like the one in which I grew up, I am aware of the challenges of developing an effective bank of strategies. However, I like many of you, believe that the education of all of our students is so critical to the future of our communities, our state, our nation that it’s worth doing the work required to become knowledgeable about what really works. Please join me in making our schools a better place for all students!